The five best downloads for programming

Software developers will love these freebies

Whether you're a beginner or a pro when it comes to programming and software development, there's some great free tools available to help make your job easier. Here's five of the best.

Python 3.2

Python is an interesting interpreted programming language that has something to offer many different audiences.

If you're a programming beginner, for instance (or just vaguely remember tinkering with a BASIC variant, long ago) then you'll appreciate Python's readability. Even total novices will be able to look at Python code and figure out at least some of what's going on, and that all helps to make it relatively easy to learn.

RJ TextEd 7.30

RJ TextEd is a free Unicode text and source code editor with many useful development features.

The program has many powerful editing features. An advanced Search and Replace document includes support for regular expressions, for example; there's a built-in spell checker; tabs so you can have several files open at once; multiple (and more intelligent) clipboards speed up your cut and paste operations; and there are plenty of other additional features, everywhere you look.

ImageMagick 6.6.9

ImageMagick is a collection of mostly command-line based tools that allow you to view, convert and edit graphics files.

At the simplest you might just use a command like "convert image.jpg image.png" to convert an image from one format to another.

But the program can also manipulate images (resize, rotate, crop or flip) add shapes or text, apply special effects, create animated GIFs from a sequence of images, create composite images, montages, and much more.

Zend Framework 1.11.3

The system allows you to build Web 2.0 applications and web services that can take advantage of APIs from Amazon, Flickr, Google and Yahoo!, as well as API providers like ProgrammableWeb and StrikeIron.

A fully object-oriented PHP 5 class library ensures your applications have a solid foundation. And features include AJAX support via JSON, a native implementation of the Lucene search engine, and support for multiple database systems, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, SQLite, Oracle, IBM DB2 and more.

NPE File Analyzer 1.1.2.1

NPE File Analyzer is a powerful developer-oriented tool that provide you with low-down technical detail on executable files on your system (EXE, DLL, SYS files and so on).

In just a few clicks you can view file sections, directories, resources, import and export table, and more.

A built-in Process Manager displays running processes, and can show you their loaded modules. You can then load the process executable or module into NPE File Analyzer for more detailed analysis, while other options allow you to pause, resume or kill the executable's threads.